The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
When troubleshooting, a Fault Isolation Manual (FIM) can be an important tool, especially when highly complex aerospace or aircraft applications are involved. A FIM comprises a structured sequence of tests to identify the root-cause of fault messages, as reported by on-board diagnostic systems. The structured sequence of tests is based on knowledge of individuals involved with the components and subsystems being tested, as well as historical fault information of the components. The tests are designed to reduce failure ambiguity groups, for example sets of Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) that could have caused the fault message, and typically result in the identification of a single LRU as the root cause of the message. A significant limitation of a FIM is that the sequence of steps used for maintenance troubleshooting is static. Thus, even if an LRU is found to be unreliable, the test that implicates it is always carried out at the same predetermined stage in the test sequence. In aircraft applications, this may adversely impact the availability of an aircraft by requiring additional time to identify an LRU that is the cause of a given fault message. Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to dynamically structure testing in a more cost efficient manner.